earticle

영어

The purpose of this study is to investigate how Korean EFL speakers understand conversational implicatures. Although EFL speakers may have an advanced level of grammatical knowledge, they sometimes experience communicative difficulty with speakers from English speaking countries. This is mainly because EFL speakers lack knowledge of conversational implicatures in learners' communicative competence. In this study, participants were divided into two groups (group A and B). Group A consisted of 44 subjects (24 males and 20 females) who stayed in English speaking countries for less than 3 years, while group B consisted of 33 subjects (13 males and 20 females) who stayed in English speaking countries for more than 3 years. Four types of implicature were used: Pope Q, relevance, indirect criticism, and the minimum requirement rule (MRR). The three research hypotheses for this study were as follows: First, residence in an English speaking environment positively influenced understanding of conversational implicatures. Second, "indirect criticism" and "pope Q" are the most difficult types of implicature to interpret for Koreans. Third, females are better than males in understanding implicature. The results of this study indicated that the duration of residence in English speaking countries was positively correlated with understanding conversational implicature. The study also showed that the most difficult types of conversational implicature for Koreans were the "minimum requirement rule" and "indirect criticism," and that the difference of gender in the performance of conversational implicature was statistically insignificant (p=.497).